Winter Fun Day 2015

What a fantastic day was had by our skiers. It was such fun and we all did a lot of learning. Check out the photopeach slide below.


Winter Fun Day 2015 on PhotoPeach

Ice Hockey & The Red Devils

Today we had a special visitor. Dean Tonks from the Red Devils, the Christchurch Ice Hockey Team. He came along to talk to the junior school about Ice Hockey.

The students were really excited about the visit. Two students from Te Kakano in particular. Shjon and Laura are learning how to play Ice Hockey and Dean is their coach.

We listened to Dean talk about what Ice Hockey is about, the things you need to wear and how to balance on the ice. Dean also advised us on the right things to wear on the ice skating rink on Friday. He also offered to come down to the rink on Friday and give us all a hand.

Thanks Shjon and Laura for inviting Dean.

Thanks Dean for coming down. 

YMS in Town

What an incredible day we had going into town today. We all jumped on the bus at 11:30 and headed into town. Everyone was in good spirits and excited about what was going to happen. 

We arrived safely and all hopped off the bus. The wind was very cold but we were quickly moved into the Christchurch City Council building. It was very large and we could hear Aranui School's Kapa Haka group singing their hearts out. They sound fantastic.

After a small amount of waiting quietly (and our students were so good waiting quietly) we headed upstairs to an area we could drop our bags and sit till it was our turn.

Finally 12:30 arrived and we were moved forward for our performance. Here are a few videos of the Seniors. Sadly my phone had too much on it and I couldn't capture the juniors. However other people have taken some footage and I will post them when I receive them. 

What a great performance from everyone. We looked and sounded fantastic. The parents that attended had big smiles and everyone clapped hard at the end.

Well done YMS!

We then headed for a brisk walk to the Botanic Gardens for some kai and a run around. The kids loved the walk and were commenting on all the things happening around the city they saw. 

Blake even found a new friend.

We had a great lunch and run around and then it was pack to pounding the pavement to get to the bus on time. Whew, we made it. Everyone was very tired by the time we got back to school and so we finished with some play and quiet time in class.

Children sharing their work.

Mufti Day - Next Wednesday

Hi Totara - here is the video the Student Council promised.

Christchurch City Libraries

We had a visit from three librarians from the Christchurch City Libraries yesterday morning. They had come to tell us all about what the libraries around Christchurch have to offer and give us a fun activity to do. Victoria was one of our librarians and she works at the Hornby Library. This library is Yaldhurst's closest library.

They began by asking us what libraries are near us. A lot of us knew about Hornby, Upper Riccarton and the libraries in town. We also found out about the Papanui Library and South Library. South and Upper Riccarton are big libraries that have cafe's and conference rooms.

We then were shown some cool things on the library website that we can use. Did you know that children can hold books for free? It costs adults $2 to hold a book but children can put a hold on any book and get it sent to any library they want all for free. That is pretty cool. The library website also has some great sites that we can use for free. For example the National Geographic site and a book reading site. These sites are kind of like online encyclopedias and would cost if the library didn't pay for them.

One of the librarians showed us all the types of things we can hire from the library; books, cd's, dvd's, read-along books, audio books and even books that are on a device that you can just carry around and listen too.

We were read a wonderful story called The Fantastic Flying Books of Martin Lessmore.

It was incredible. The book came alive on screen and we could see it move and change. It was so exciting. 

The the librarians handed us iPads, one each! We had to move around the library, take a photo of something from the book and using our iPads, and an app called ChatterPix, give the character a voice. We recorded ourselves speaking and shared our ideas based on the prompt sheet we were given. 

We then all sat back down together and some of us were able to share what we had come up with. It was really great. Thanks Christchurch City Libraries!

P.S - If you aren't a member of the Christchurch City Libraries then come and see me and I can give you a membership form. The library is such a great place to visit and there are so many benefits for children. 

Digi Dig

Today we had Mark Maddren from Core Education in our class helping us learn more about how to use our Chromebooks. Mark took us through a slide that explained how we were to be archeologists but to explore some websites not the ground.

We found some short cuts that we had to put into our own slide that we can share with Rimu class in the future.

We are looking forward to Mark coming back and doing some more with us.